This is written just form my experience, if you disagree with something fell free to comment, and add your own views. I am only really writing this as I haven’t seen many cleric guides about, so thought a rough one would be better than none at all.

Ok So you have decided to play a cleric, great you have chosen the most sought after class in the game when it comes to party play. Now the first thing you must decide upon is what armour you use. Here you have 2 choices, Light armour or Robe.

Light Armour

Light armour offers more (physical) defence, and as such it is likely you last longer in it. It also unlocks some additional self buffage of your defences in your spells (the charity line). Light armour is a good choice for those who are either new to the party work, healing etc. and don’t have a good understanding of how aggro works (tho I do sometimes myself get confused by Joymax). Or if you plan to do a lot of solo play, where you will be taking hits yourself.

The down side to light armour is that you will loose some mana – or rather you gain mana through wearing robes.

[size=150]Robes[/size]

Robes lack the defence that you get from physical armour, however apart from looking better (at least in my opinion) they also unlock some spells effects that reduce the mana cost of your abilities (Faith). The additional mana saved may not be much, but that extra heal you can get off may save you and your party. If you feel confident in your own abilities, and or you know you will be working with a good tank (a warrior who understand taunt) then Robe is the choice for you.

So you have chosen what armour to use now to decide your build. Personally I feel clerics should be full int, but I will go over all options here.

[size=150]Full Int Build[/size]

This option will provide you with the maximum mana, as well as stronger attacks. Early on in the game you will very rarely find yourself low on mana and as such wonder if you should have gone for a hybrid build. However later in the game the demand on your mana increases and you will be thankful for the extra mana you have in this build.

The down side to this is you will have low HP. This shouldn’t too much of a problem, in party play you should never take a hit (if you do, slap your tank). And although your HP is low it should still be ok for most solo play (more on that later). However if you are worried, or just want the extra HP then as long as your magic balance stays above 90% you can invest in some Str points as you lvl, whilst your mana should still be sufficient. Also remember to add Str and Stamina tablets to your gear, that can really help boost your life.

[size=150]Hybrid[/size]

Ok So your insisting on having more HP, fine, I still wouldn’t go for more than 1 Str point for ever 3 Int points, this will give you more HP, whilst your mana pool will still be large enough to cope with 80% of situations. If you plan to mainly solo play (then why are you being a cleric??) then this build might be for you.

[size=150]Full str[/size]

Just Don’t! – you will suck.

whilst we are talking about builds i will quickly mention alchemy. Being a cleric you need both mana, and to stay alive to use this. Use Stamina and Magic tabs (and if you can Str and Int ones too), if you can afford it then from D5 onwards try and put Str, Stamina, Int and Magic tabs on all your gear, fully pimped this can easily give you nearly 1000hp/mp more at these levels (for a full int build thats more than 50% more HP). However pimping all your gear like this will cost money, so as a general rule i just try to add Str and Int to weapons shields, and Stamina/magic tabs to maybe 3 peices of armor (Head, Chest and legs sell best - so more likely to make your money back if you use them on these items).

Now down to the nitty gritty, Spells!

[size=150]Spells!![/size]

Ok Lets go over the easy ones first. You Must have you must have Heavenly Rage, Faith and Charity, HR is needed for when you have to deal damage, and you will sometimes. The other two are passives needed to use other spells.

Buffs – Get them all there are only 4, and they make a lot of difference. but be aware both mental blessing and force blessing require you to have a cleric rod in your hand at all times, and can not be cast on yourself. Also although they stay on other people when you change weapons Soul and body blessing do not last on yourself when you change weapons (dont get a cleric subclass if you just want buffs).

Ok that’s the easy ones done, now here are my must have spells, you may disagree with some of them

Early on in the game you will want to get Healing, Group Healing and Healing division below lvl 30 these will make up the backbone of your spells.

Along with these grab resurrection and Bless Spell, Bless spell is an amazing ability which you will grow to love… and want its babies. It’s a 45 second buff that increases your party defences by a LOT – you wont die when its up.

At Level 30 you get Healing cycle this is the first HoT (heal over time spell) you get, and it rocks. In a good group you can just keep that spell on the tank and that’s all the healing you will have to do.

As you approach mid game you need to start thinking about the Recovery series, these 3 spells are amazing, but have flaws. Recovery and Group recovery are stronger versions of Healing and group healing. I personally stopped levelling up the Healing spells when I got Recovery’s (keep Healing division). However they use more mana, and have longer cool downs, so be careful.

Recovery Division (RD) is a spell you get at lvl 40. And it Rocks. It’s a 5 min HoT that heals the person with the Lowest HP% every 5 seconds if you have a good party, with a good tank you can just cast this spell then go afk, coming back every 5 mins to recast it (I wouldn’t recommend it, but you can do it.) – With a good party, and a s/s warrior u can even fight party giants just using RD to heal.

The Problem with RD is it requires either a small party or a well organised one to be effective. If you have an 8 man party with 5 people trying to tank stuff then RD wont work that well, as too many people will be taking damage to often. Also if this is the case I would leave the party, you don’t need the extra pressure of having noobs not working togther.

Now attack Spells, you only really got 3, Trial Cross, Over healing, and Offering. Cross is your basic attack spell it will (with a full Int build) do about 50% dmg to a normal mob of your level. Overhealing is a fixed damage spell, its good aginst mobs with very high magic defense, or in combo with cross for rapid fire, but it generally is weaker than cross.

Offering – this spell is a biggest Nuke in the game however remember it takes 95% of your HP to cast, so DON'T ever use it when you have aggro, and always have a Pot ready to use right after. You get the spell at lvl 40, at that lvl with lvl42 weapons it deals around 8k dmg to a creature of your level, I feel although that is good damage it perhaps should be more, the only reason being it is only 2x as big as a wizards standard nuke (fireball) and at a cost of 95% hp I would expect at least 3 times. Also this spell is AOE so don’t aggro extra stuff by accident

Now I feel thats all the Spell you need, tho you may want more. The status spells (holy ward and innocent) are nice, but by the time you notice they got a status problem its usually been auto cured. That being said i do have them, and they dont take a lot fo SP to maintain, and when fighting mobs that you knwo will cause status problems, they are nice - but not vital.

The bind spell is nice for PvP, but by the time you cast it you will probably be dead already. It sucks for PvE.

Group reverse and reverse oblation I feel are a waste of SP, resurrection may take longer but does the job just fine.

To get all you spells you want you may need a 2 gap, if you have a subclass you will want even more (more on that later).

On all the spells (offenisve and healing) you will notice there is a reflect value, a number in brackets.

I am not 100%certain on this but i believe that this means the spell will deal the dmg (or heal) the smoutn stated plus the percentage of you magic attack power shown in brackets, so, as with the image, Recovery lvl 3 heals for 1379 (300%), so if you had a magic attack power of 100 it would heal for 1379 +300, so a total of 1679, tho i havnt fully tested this theory, and if anyone knows for sure then please confirm this for me.

Basically you spam Cross and over healing at your target until its dead, healing when you need to. Before recovery, the only instant heal spell u have is healing division, and this is best to use when soloing as you don’t have to target yourself either. Also remember to buff yourself.

Clerics are actually very good solo players, however they are slow, you wont die (if you keep to normal mobs) but a wizard or rogue will be able to earn exp fast than you.

Now as Hakubini has mentioned it is better to perhaps use auto attack that overhealing. I personally dont due to my auto attack always taking about 20 seconds to stop when i try and cast another spell (its killed me a few times...:banghead: ). However he is right in that your auto attack probably does provide greater dps, even if indervidual hits are lower, however overhealing is still a must have for high magic defence targets, even if you dont use it for grinding.

For solo play make sure you have enough mana potions, in a good grind session you will use very few HP pots (tho ofc take some with you) however will eat MP pots like theres no tomorrow, i expect to use a mp pot almost every cooldown. - maybe 120 an hr... depending on what and how im hunting. also make sure you have a stack of vigor pots for emergancys.

[size=150]Party Play[/size]

This is where we shine. The most important thing for you is to have a good tank to work with, find someone who you can trust and who will always taunt mobs off you as soon as they may aggro on you. If you have a good tank, and you yourself are good then even if the rest of the group are idiots you should still do OK.

Now when in a party understand that you are the most important one there (this sounds big headed, and it is, but you need to take control). Tell everyone that if anyone other than those designated tanks or pullers aggro they wont get healed, also let them know that if they run off you wont follow them. In a party your job is to keep the Tank alive, if the tank is doing a good job no one else should take more than 1 hit of damage. This isn’t always the case and always be ready to heal when something goes wrong, but don’t put up with idiots, a Party isn’t just a place where 7 people can solo party mobs because the 8th is healing them. That I can’t stress enough, if people start to run off and solo play expecting you to heal them, just let them die. Its bad enough when fighting a PT giant and a pt champ spawned on your wizards as it is, you don’t need a rogue somewhere off screen swearing at you cause when they tried to solo a pt mob on their own with xbow extreme up that they didn’t get healed.

Positioning

This can be crucial to staying alive. Knowing where to stand can make both your life easier, and that of the warriors. The perfect spot to stand (see picture below) is between warriors and the DPS Classes. you do not want to crowd the fighting scene, as it can make targeting hard, and if the target uses an AOE attack then you must be outside of its range. However the closer you are to a tank the faster a warrior can get to you if you accidentally aggro somthing. however make sure all the members of the party fighting are within healing range, out of range problems will often cause deaths, dont let it happen.

Finally by being placed in the middle of the group you should not be th one who accidentally aggro nearby mobs patrolling the area, as you should have party members all around you who can do that first .

The image shows how i (Varzze) am nicely plaed between the Tank (Malbec) and the two dealing damage (the other two party members were AFK at the time).

Finally Know your own limits, yes the best exp might be gained from fighting mobs 11 levels higher than you, but if you find that hard to heal don’t do it, know what you can do, and work within that. If you do you will keep everyone alive, become known as a good healer and always have ppl asking you for partys… which gets very annoying

[size=150] Who do you heal when?[/size]

This is a tough area, and one which often makes the difference between a good healer and a great healer. Your main job is keeping everyone alive, most of the time your main target for healing should always be the warrior...if others start to take damage, chuck out a group heal and hope the warrior takes aggro off them. However what to do when it all goes wrong...

First notice how fast people are taking damage - a wizard may still have 80%hp, when a warrior has only 30% but 99% of the time the wizard will be killed in the next hit when the warrior may be good for another 10. so look to the int builds with low hp and make them safe - if you have grouphealing, healing divsion and group recovery you can just spam these untill things settle down.

One thing to remember is that if your the only cleric there, your the only one with Res, so make sure you yourself stay alive, after you try and keep the tank alive - you would be amazed what just a cleric and warrior can do.

Tied into this is who do you buff, if your alone, and got 8 ppl everyone cant have all the buffs. If your with a good grp, who you trust and know then Give Str to Str users, and Int to Int users to maximise damage. however if your unsure or got ppl dying a lot then buff those who are most vaulrable - for me this often means Main tank (give him all the help you can) and then wizards followed by bards - a pure Int wizard with life control has very little HP, so your buffs really help. Sorry rogues and warlocks but your too good at surviving on your own.

Ok Final section; [size=150]Sub - Classes[/size]

Ill split this into two bits, first for those who want cleric as their main, the second for those who are intrested or have cleric as a back up class.

If your a cleric, with an Int heavy build do not choose Warriors or rogues as a subclass - they offer very little. this leaves you with Bard, Warlock or wizard. which to choose depends on what you want, If you want a true subclass (aka a class that is used for just a few aspects) then go for Bard, After Cleric bards offer the best buffs and abilites to help you along your way. However if you want to duel mastery (play two masterys at the same lvl) then choose one of the others - i have a wizard who's mastery is the same as my clerics. The duel mastery is basiclly chosen for solo Play, wizards especially are good grinders - able to 1hit most things their lvl with life control, and if you keep RD up you will have a nice bit of healing too. With this build i basically play cleric when in groups and wizard when alone - although when with a good grp i often just leave RD up and then use wizard to boost the groups dmg - but remember you are still the groups healer and so you need ot be good at changing weapons and casting those last minute heals.

Taking a subclass ofc requires more SP, if you just want a subclass for a few talents (aka bard) you may get away with a 2-3lvl gp (depending on SP tickets etc.) However i need a 4lvl gap to have duel mastery, which makes leveling slower, tho i feel more fun.

For Those thinking of a cleric as a subclass you need ot decide if your going to heal - if you are then great, read the guide, have a 4 lvl gap and be duel. however if you just want a few spells get the following; Ressurection, Bless Spell, Healing cycle, Recovery Division. With these (especially warriors it seems) you can greatly add to your own abilites, having a warrior with 8k hp, high defences and being healed every 5 seconds by RD is very very hard to kill for a lvl 42. again a 3gap should be enough to get all these talents.

Ok, that’s a rough guide for now, will continue to update as questions are asked etc. , if there any questions ask away.

When starting, DON'T give any points to mastery because your skill point will drop if you do

I tried one and here is the result :Exp : 278 Sp : 126added one level to masteryExp : 248 Sp: 112At last I could get my picture yay

At level 4, give all your sp to mastery and the skills that have opened and you'll still have sp left.

Then sp farm until lvl 10!(give no point to mastery)That's because a couple of skills open at that levelThis could be hard because you won't be able to wear armors but there will be a nice sp(had 145 sp when I became lvl 10)

You'll be able to open all the skills and improve then keep mastery at lvl 10 until lvl 14 and spend all of your sp at the skillsDONT FORGET THAT MASTERY REDUCES SP , NOT IMPROVING SKILLS